A social media gaffe has left the West Australian Minister for Education red-faced after it emerged he "Liked" a Facebook photograph of a teenager exposing his genitals.

MLC Peter Collier was friends with the WA Young Liberal member on Facebook when the then 16-year-old posted the photo, in which his private parts are visible, in late 2011.

Mr Collier clicked the Like button on the photo, along with almost 30 others, but it emerged only recently after the teenager tweeted it to his followers.

Tweets by the teenager who exposed himself revealed the Facebook gaffe.

Now a university student, the teenager wrote, "Forgot to say that a senior WA Cabinet minister liked the photo on Facebook."

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When challenged to name the minister by other Twitter users he replied, "Peter Collier."

Mr Collier told Channel Seven he hadn't noticed the boy was exposing himself in the picture and felt "silly" after realising his mistake.

"What I genuinely saw was a nice photo of a young man with what I thought was possibly his father."

"What he did, was what he regarded was a bit of harmless fun, that's come back to bite him. I'm embarrassed and I've got to say it just shows us all that we've just got to be a bit more vigilant in our use of Facebook."

Opposition spokeswoman for Community Services Sue Ellery called for the Premier to investigate the incident.

"This is a man who is a senior minister in charge of the professional standards of dealing with young people and young people's use of social media."

14 comments

'Didn't notice'??? The teenager is wearing very dark pants, I am assuming the large black square is used to cover the offending bits because it accounts for a reasonable sized area of pale flesh being exposed. And there are only two people in the photo - it's hardly 'fourth bloke from the left in the annual footy team photo'! How can he not have noticed? If Collier was a teacher in his own Department you can bet that excuse wouldn't be believed.

Commenter

Jeff

Location

Perth

Date and time

May 16, 2013, 9:13PM

when a photo comes up in your news feed, it doesn't show the whole pic.. you only get a portion if it until you open it. i'd say he didn't open the pic so didn't see the bottom half.

Commenter

KellyE

Date and time

May 17, 2013, 10:55AM

Lets get real...wheres the news value in this story. Maybe the sanctimonous members of the labour Party will try and flog the story to death,but its really not worth a reply. Sorry.

Commenter

clonty muldoon

Location

perth

Date and time

May 16, 2013, 9:13PM

And yet you did reply.

Commenter

Dan

Date and time

May 17, 2013, 6:17AM

@ Dan...Yeah I know but I did say "sorry" guess I will just have to live with it for the rest of my life.

Commenter

clonty Muldoon

Location

Perth

Date and time

May 17, 2013, 9:00AM

This is not a "gaffe", it's behaviour completely unacceptable by a minister of the crown! Here's a man who was once a house master at a private school, and is now education minister dealing with matters associated with children and adolescents. Do we have to spell it out? Why is he looking at young guys' pages in the first place?

Commenter

D Murphy

Date and time

May 17, 2013, 1:20AM

Get some perspective and don't be so melodramatic. While it may be a novel concept for you, most people in the world have friends and relatives. By what confected standard are you trying to judge whether or not Collier is or isn't allowed to be friends with other people?

Commenter

Zombie Jesus

Date and time

May 17, 2013, 7:10AM

It could have been a mistake, back in 2011 facebook was very different to what it is now. Whn photos were posted, they only showed part of it on the newsfeeds so he might have not actually seen it. I would be more worried that someone has posted the photo in the place, violating facebook terms and conditions as well as if he was 16 publishing child pornography, why go after a minister after all this time when there is more than that issue at play.

Commenter

R

Date and time

May 17, 2013, 7:50AM

I think is says more about the young liberals than anything else. How often did this 'young liberal' get his nurries out in photos?

Commenter

micko

Date and time

May 17, 2013, 8:14AM

Typical Fairfax beat up. Anyone who uses FB knows that photo previews are cropped & if he didn't open it up fully, he may very well not have seen that tiny thing.If there is a story here, it's the immaturity of the Uni student who gets the luxury of anonymity whilst denigrating someone else.